Hi Scotty, I have noticed a trend on the last few cars I have wanted to check out People offering cars through Facebook marketplace are terrible at communicating.
I was interested in a 2004 Highlander and messaged the seller on Friday evening. No response on Friday. Then Saturday morning they do respond saying they can’t show the car until 6:30PM. That’s fine. So I ask for an address of where to see the SUV. I ask again 3 times during the day. No response.
Finally at 9:00PM the car marked as sold.
My beef is these cars are selling too quickly and likely are not getting a mechanic to check them out. (That’s on the new buyer).
But how can I get a good price if so many people are buying “mechanic unseen?”
I really enjoy your YouTube channel. Good stuff!
Good observation. It’s a lot like the housing market, and things ARE selling too fast
Facebook Marketplace is a hot mess. Avoid it if at all possible. I've finally decided to not purchase any vehicles through there myself after all the scams, ghost sellers, title issues, so on and so on. 80% of what is on there is salvage/rebuilt junk (Is it a clean title? "Its a clean rebuilt title".....no such thing.), 50% of the sellers don't own the car they are selling or know anything about it (I asked a guy whether or not the convertible top on his C6 Corvette was automatic or manual. His answer: "It has the sport mode where you can shift it." Huh. Must be a new feature. Not the trans my guy, how about the top? "I dunno". Oh ok....I'm gonna pass...), everything is overpriced and has paper plates, and everyone is a rude knucklehead.
I'll be sticking with Craigslist. Easier to navigate, less scams, nicer people, less junk. I wouldn't waste my time with FaceBook if they said they revamped everything tomorrow. Done looking through their online salvage yard, a.k.a. marketplace.
it's a bad time to buy used cars
I totally agree with @Mod_Man.
CL is a better place for buying a used car and I think part of that is because you have to take your time to put an add on CL, while in Facebook, just by the FB app, people post things. Most of the information are fake.
Your best bet is to ask your friends and local honest mechanics to keep eyes on the cars you are interested in.
Agree. Craigslist also charges $5 an ad, and most of your troublemakers aren't willing to pay the fee even though it is not much money. It filters out a lot of the fake ads.
Try craigslist and listings with good details of the car. Think what some sellers are going through as well. Someone contacts them saying they will come, and they give adress, and they never show up. "ghost" buyers and sellers everywhere. You can also take the safer route and just find a good price at a dealer (like using autotempest.com or cargurus.com) and then negotiate and have a mechanic check it out. Don't waste your time with people who check facebook every 2 3 days and give you late responses.
Yep, this happens to a lot of people. Where I live, at the start of the pandemic there was a rush for corollas where people who have no clue about cars, dont ask mechanics and just buy them.
This was a mess, people payed enormous amounts of money for the ones with the horrid C50A MMT (some payed 3 times their value) and others stormed and bough the terrible ZZ-series engines.
But this did lead to a drop in the prices of American and European cars - It was a great period in time to get a chic reliable car if you know what models to get.
It's the same here, FB marketplace is littered with badly worded ads for overpriced junk that's usually just being re-sold. Plenty of occasions that the same car pops up in two different ads because one seller forgets to mark it as sold, and the other realises they've bought a lemon and wants to ditch it ASAP.
Not entirely sure if the used car price mania has hit the ground here though, but there are still junk little Renault and Peugeot going for stupid money with stupid high amounts of city mileage on the odo.
Craigs List isn't a thing over here really, but we've got doneDeal, same idea. Plenty of independent mechanics sell through it, usually things they've found elsewhere with minor problems and the owner too lazy or just not bothered fixing.
